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Mandarin M3^® - Circulation

Facilitate Your Front-Desk Operations with Our Powerful Yet Easy-to-Use Circulation Module

M3 allows you to view patron, item and transaction information in a three pane split screen visible during loan, return, renewal, or reserve activities. Customize the data in each pane to optimize your workflow, and even display patron photos as well as item images such as book jackets.

M3 Circulations's efficient design puts frequent circulation activities just a few clicks away. One-click functionality for loans, returns, reserves, renewals, status review, bookings, and fine processing means shorter lines and fewer personnel at the front desk. Enable Self Check or Self Return, and expand your patron offerings without impact on library staff.

Circulation Features

Fully customizable screens
Multilingual interface (English, Spanish, French)
Ability to link images to patrons and items
Standard or customized patron and item messages
Immediate update and display of item and patron status
Self-service check-in/check-out options
Backdating check-in and override capabilities available to authorized users
Flexible calendar interface, including fixed and repeated closed days for holidays
Fast multiple-item batch return
On-the-fly transaction processing
In-house circulation to track usage within the library
Hourly loan capability
Special reserve collection management
Library transaction reports
Circulation Desk receipt printing for patrons
Quick return functionality via a single barcode scan
Sound/voice alert options
OPAC and Cataloging search access from Circulation
Ability to assign items to collections with specific due date parameters with Group Editor
Ability to set patron and staff circulation rights and authorization levels with Group Editor

Textbook Management

Circulation can be used to store and manage textbook collections. Textbook data such as title, author, and publication can be entered as a bibliographic record and linked to any number of copies. Barcodes can be attached to each copy and scanned when textbooks are loaned or returned by students or staff. You can assign loan periods by semester, day, week, month, year, or hour. A special reserve group can be created for the collection, available for loan to group members only. You can assign to this group desired loan lengths and, if needed, an expiration date, at which point textbooks and other materials return to the regular collection.

Inventory provides another method for tracking missing textbooks kept in storage or in off-site collections such as classrooms. In addition, reports can be run based on homeroom, student, teacher, subject, and so on. and lists of items not returned can be produced for teaching staff.

Reports

Frequently used reports and tracking features integrated into the Circulation module, directly available to librarians from the same screen as other circulation tasks
Ability to run transaction for the entire library, by patron or by item
Ability to print receipts and statistics for Today's Transactions, Today's Loans, and Today's Returns
An extensive number of circulation reports preloaded in the ReportTool module, accessing current M3 Circulation transaction data when run

Tracking

Ability to track in-house usage statistics with the In-House Circulation function
Ability to quickly and easily upload transactions from portable scanners directly into circulation for off-site (such as bookmobile) and emergency backup support

Here's What's New in Version 1.7 SP1

( Current Service and Update Agreement Subscribers Only. Includes Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 )

Mandarin M3® is known for its powerful, sophisticated yet simple-to-use features – and now there’s more of the same! If you purchased M3 version 1.6 (or earlier) or if you downloaded a free version of M3 (version 1.6 or earlier), now is the time to upgrade to version 1.7 SP1.

Circulation

The Check Holdings for Reserves feature has been corrected. This feature allows you to create holds for all newly-added and available items, where all pre-existing holdings were on loan and reserved.
If the default loan period extends beyond a global recall date, the global recall date is always used as the due date, even if there is a session-based due date that is sooner than the recall date.
When you search for an item and click the barcode in the results list, the item loads in the item pane, but the transaction does not process.
On Windows Vista, you can search using Search Dialog and select the item (or patron) to load into Circulation.
Windows 2003 (including XP x64) and Windows Vista users no longer receive the “Initialization Failed” dialog during start up.
Various scenarios involving adjusting or overriding bookings when loaning items have been addressed: Adjusted loan overlaps first day of booking; first-created, not first-up booking removed by loan override; more than one booking not handled when a loan overrides more than one booking.
If an overdue item is renewed during the Grace Period, the Overdue Item block message is no longer displayed.
When a Booking is canceled, Circulation no longer sends out the Item Hold email.
Cancel override when doing batch processes (renewal) does not stop the transaction from processing on the first item that triggers the override. Some holds may not appear under Item Transactions, but they do show up under Patron Transactions.
When there are multiple reserves, skipping the patron with the hold and loaning the item to another patron causes the hold to be lost.

Inventory

Inventory now operates consistently on multiple-core CPU’s.

( Does Not Include Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3 )

This release introduces new features in the M3 Core modules as well as several innovative optional modules, including Syndetic Solutions, MARC Magician integrated with M3 Cataloging, and M3 Pocket Module.

New M3 Core module features are outlined below.

Cataloging

Ability to import pictures and to update patron and item records with these pictures.
Ability to create multiple holdings for a bibliographic record at one time.
When sorting, non-filing characters ("the", "a", and so on) are now ignored.
When creating a new holding for an existing bibliographic record, the prefix (852#k) is now copied into the new holding record.
Ability to tag a block of records in the main Cataloging window by selecting the first record and pressing SHIFT while selecting the last record; this tags all records in between.
The removal of empty fields after saving a record is now optional.

Windows^® OPAC

Ability to view book cover images.
Ability to link to Syndetics Solutions, which allows patrons to view summaries, reviews, and other content data for items in your collection. It also provides cover images for thousands of items. This is available on a subscription basis for an additional charge.
Ability to customize your library name on the main window.br />
Ability to save and print holdings data from the Search Results and Bookbag windows.
Ability to view holdings information in the Bookbag Details window.
In libraries with union databases, local holdings are indicated by a star-shaped Availability and Tagging check box.